Customers of Ireland’s biggest ISP can no longer access The Pirate Bay. Earlier this year, Eircom settled out of court with Ireland’s music industry and agreed to block the world’s largest tracker and today, September 1st, the ban took effect. The site’s domain names and IP addresses have all been blocked.
Previously Eircom worked out an agreement with the Irish equivalent of the RIAA to disconnect customers suspected of repeated copyright infringements. Today, Ireland’s largest ISP announced another deal with music industry lobbyists in which they agree to prevent their customers from accessing The Pirate Bay, starting next month.
This month Ireland’s largest ISP will assist with an anti-piracy campaign against its own customers. After making a deal with IRMA, Ireland’s answer to the RIAA, Eircom will first warn alleged copyright infringers before ultimately disconnecting them. Now, in what appears to be a leaked document, the entire groundbreaking deal is outlined.
Next month Ireland’s largest ISP will begin an anti-piracy campaign against its own customers. After caving in entirely to the orders of the music industry, Eircom will first warn alleged copyright infringers, then slow their connection “to a snail’s pace”, all followed up by disconnection from the Internet.
Earlier this year Ireland’s RIAA, IRMA, and the country’s largest ISP, Eircom, reached private agreement to implement 3 strikes and disconnections for alleged pirates. At concerns that this would place Eircom at a competitive disadvantage, part of the deal would see IRMA go after Ireland’s other ISPs too. IRMA kept their promise.
Throughout Europe, music industry lobbyists have tried to convince ISPs to block file-sharing sites, and not without success. The Irish ISP Eircom is the first to cave in to the pressure of the music industry, and without any argument will block all file-sharing related websites – starting with The Pirate Bay.
Eircom, the Irish ISP that agreed to disconnect alleged file-sharers at the behest of the music industry, has thousands of customers still exposed to a serious security hole. The flaw, which affects up to 250,000 subscribers, could mean they are wrongly accused of something they didn’t do. Thanks to Eircom, they may now lose their Internet connection.
This week, Irish ISP Eircom and the music industry avoided an expensive legal battle, and settled out of court with a deal to disconnect alleged pirates. Eircom didn’t want to start using filtering technology to thwart pirates, so it made a deal with the labels instead – and it sucks.
Up until today, the ‘Big Four’ record labels were taking legal action against Ireland’s biggest ISP, Eircom, in order to force it to employ filtering technology to stop online pirates. The case has been aborted as Eircom, at the behest of the music industry, has agreed to start disconnecting those accused of illicit file-sharing.
In line with its new strategy of trying to force ISPs to take responsibility for the actions of their customers, in 2008 the ‘Big Four’ record labels, headed up by the IFPI, announced they would take Ireland’s largest ISP to court. The case began yesterday and is already proving controversial.
The ‘Big Four’ record labels – EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner have started legal proceedings to force an ISP to end piracy on its network. The action, brought against Irish ISP, Eircom, is the first of its kind.
